


The Crown and the Shadow

by DeathsHusband



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Divergence happens during Books of Doom, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Pheromones, Rough Body Play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21729889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathsHusband/pseuds/DeathsHusband
Summary: "There is a whisper on the wind, on the tongues of those who seek implements of death to wage their wars."  A whisper was what Romulus' voice was now, the dark growl of some unseen shadow, sibilant with its quiet.  It curled through the room like smoke and clung to everything it touched  It said, "Von Doom."..."So kill the boy's heart," he growled, "and then kill his nightmare."***This is a Canon Divergent AU set in the 1970s, after Victor von Doom is expelled from university but before he entered the monastery.  Instead, Romulus sends Daken to kill Victor's childhood love, to capture him away from the various covert organizations and militaries that want his power, and to make him theirs.But for two heartless, devil-touched men, the path to their true desires is long.  Victor's leads him to Latveria, to rip a throne from the man who killed his father and make a place of comfort for the family he knew.  Daken's leads him from heartbeat to stilled heartbeat, from bed to empty bed, seeking a power in the shadows that requires, to build its terrifying presence, an equally terrifying light.
Relationships: Victor von Doom/Daken Akihiro
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	The Crown and the Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> For the timeline in this story, I have set Victor's date of birth as 1955. He is currently 21 years old. Since the city in which he meets Valeria is never specified, I have left this vague. 
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings for death of a minor character (who I love and who unfortunately also dies in canon), violent and grisly imagery, use of pheromone manipulation, use of emotional manipulation, and dubious consent (on kissing) due to pheromone manipulation.

_"There is a whisper on the wind, on the tongues of those who seek implements of death to wage their wars."_ A whisper was what Romulus' voice was now, the dark growl of some unseen shadow, sibilant with its quiet. It curled through the room like smoke and clung to everything it touched It said, " _Von Doom."_

The room was large and opulently appointed. It seemed strange for such a place to be lit only by the moonlight streaming through the frosted panes of the windows, silvering the gauzy drawn curtains. Not a fire flickered in the antique marble fireplace, not a bulb glimmered in the Tiffany lamps and crystal-dripping chandeliers. There was only moonlight in cold swaths across pale parquet floors, only moonlight that left the spatters and pools of fresh blood black and transformed the sleek pleat of Daken's trousers and his dark Oxford shoe into relief against the shadows that swallowed the rest of his form and which reduced his master to nothing but a hulking, surreal suggestion of claws and bright eyes.

This was the sort of room that should be filled with noise, with laughter and conversation. Instead, there was only Romulus' voice and the patter of the rain outside.

Daken stood by the mini-bar, his shirt-sleeves rolled back, cleaning the last spray of blood from his knuckles with the champagne towel. His jacket was draped over a nearby chair, his expression pensive and focused. It had not been his intention to murder his hosts this evening, but the arrival of his teacher constituted an end to the amusing pleasantries of this country manor, a return to the slash of claws and the smell of blood and the coiling, hungry shadows.

In truth, it was welcome. The honeyed pleasures of Emil and Sandra's bed had become cloying, and the barely-veiled avarice that purred behind Romulus' deep tones was fascinating. This sounded to be a recruitment, and Daken was never given such assignments. He was a weapon, a particularly savage one, and while he dissembled and seduced as easily as he breathed, using him for anything so easy was a waste. Finding a person's price was work for others.

_"The devices he built with bare scraps in Latveria were impressive enough, but rumors of the marvels he created for the American military, despite their subsequent destruction, have spread to every covert organization and every military in the world. This boy is a morsel that every one of them wishes to devour, a Rumplestiltzskin to spin them superiority over their enemies."_

"You want him," Daken said. He lifted the stopper from a bottle of Emil's more expensive cognac and poured himself a few fingers. The bouquet of the golden liquid, piquant with grape, mingled with the smell of death in the room in a way that he decided was ironic. A decisively unpleasant swirl of fear stink and blood stink and tart, floral sweetness. He swirled the liquor and sipped it, and tasted honey and smoke.

 _"He was an easy enough peach to bruise two years ago,"_ Romulus murmured. _"Like any impoverished boy, eager for an experience at top universities, unlimited resources, the simplest things America could offer him. But bruise he did- an experiment at the school went awry. He turned on the United States government, destroying everything he had built them and earning him a bounty in excess of the paltry one awaiting him in his home country. He violently rebuffed the KGB not long ago. They plan to ship in his childhood sweetheart to soften that cold heart."_

Daken smiled. "But we don't want it soft, do we?"

Romulus laughed. The sound was a thing of nightmares, a low harsh rumble that seemed to catch as if between sharp, fanglike teeth. _"And not broken either. Our eyes on Von Doom report an instability, a monomania and a self-disgust. The boy wears his face wrapped in white bandages and barely leaves his rooms. His nightmares are of no use to us."_

Romulus stepped into the light. Daken paused. He still shivered with a prey animal's instinctive awe every time he saw his teacher's silver hair, rugged features and cruel smile, more an ancient beast or savage god than a man.

 _"So kill the boy's heart,"_ the demon growled, _"and then kill his nightmare."_

  
As he did every morning, Victor woke with his body drenched in sweat. It felt disgusting, as though the cold flame that had nurtured him for so long had melted under the devil's mocking words, under the sound of his mother's screams and the burns that welted her flesh. He told himself, as he always did, that it was not real, that it was only a dream, but underneath a dark part of his mind whispered, _What if it is not? You were there, if only for a second. What if the fiend has clawed its way into your mind? What if it has marked you now?_

He dragged himself out of bed, washed, and wound clean linens over the ruin of his face. He ate a little, though the money he had brought with him was getting low ( _and what would he do when it was gone?_ ) but he had better things than food to buy with what was left. It was enough to keep the heart beating, the muscles moving, the eyes clear. He was always hungry, but he remembered that well enough from the leaner months back with his family in the caravan. It was a simple transition to make from the thoughtless luxury of a full belly in America. The hunger gnawed in a way that reminded him of what he sought, what he would never give up. From the fragile beams of early morning light to the wan ruddy rays of sunset, the light that drifted into his studio fell over new designs, more intricate equations, and failures left crushed and broken on cluttered floors the apartment maid feared to touch.

He finished a cup of water, cleaned his teeth and uncovered the dim, cheap bathroom mirror long enough to ensure his bandages were on properly. Then he left his rooms, his nose curling at the reek of alcohol and sweat that rose from the old man curled in the hollow near the stairwell, sleeping outside his door like some gentleman's lackey from days of old. Victor snarled as he turned his key in the lock, and snapped at the unmoving lump, "Could you kindly not drink yourself to death on my doorstep, Otto."

"Not to death," slurred the figure, "just to warmth. You're such a nice boy to worry."

It was not the first time the tramp had said such a ridiculous thing. The first time had been the day Victor had been approached by agents of the KGB. A man would have to be chasing his death in the bottle to believe it, and something about the old man's clear, calm, beatific grey eyes made Victor profoundly uncomfortable. Not, of course, in the sense of being frightened or disadvantaged, but with frustration at the trust he saw there. Vapid, insipid, puppy-bright, like the foolish children at the university where he had lost everything.

"You had best clear out before I return, old man," he snarled, and settled his coat with anger-shaking fingers before he descended into the bright, clear bustle of the street.

After America's promises had failed him, he eluded her agents in the shadows of the truly ancient cities. They suited him, and he liked them. He liked the history that one could sketch with the eye from the different buildings, from the shape of the streets and the rich colors of the stone. Though his wrapped head drew a few glances, no one stared, and the thick linens provided an anonymity that, combined with the swirl of a bright skirt here or the roar of a car through a thin alley there, felt like privacy.

After several weeks, he had learned the path by rote from his apartment building through several winding streets and alleys to a broad thoroughfare, where he exited on the left and stepped up a narrow stair of uneven brick through overgrown garden, which rose into the space between two abandoned garrets and entered the central square at a strange angle. Victor liked this angle because it gave him a second to catch the currents of the crowd in a way none of the other entrances did. He could see the patterns in the way people moved and strategize accordingly.

And that morning they were huddled in an oblong clump, drawn away in a bulls-eye pattern from something at the center. Some sort of oddity or commotion. It pricked at Victor's senses, but did not set him on alert. While whatever was being gawked at might serve as a distraction for the general bustle and allow him to be more easily ambushed by his enemies, he had not been foolish enough to leave the apartment without plenty of ways to kill, and he saw enough uniforms among the crowd to suspect police attendance was high.

He drew himself up to his full height and strolled along his usual path, wending through the south-eastern edge of the square. There was a cold sting in his pulse that was his awareness of the space around him, the steps on the cobblestones and the murmurs of voices in different languages. It was an awareness that had once served him well in guerrilla raids against the Baron's men.

He was not sure what it was had his ears pricked ready. Another worthless toad, perhaps, lapdog for a government that scrabbled and blustered after the genius of von Doom. Such a toad would be easy to squash, but only if he was ready, for among the weapons secreted on his form, Victor had nothing to stop bullets.

Instead of a rude approach to his person however, he heard the prurient conversations of the crowd of rubberneckers. From the mass, the words carried to him, translated instantly in his mind: "What a beautiful girl. Do you think she was a gypsy?"

There were billions of women in the world. Millions of beautiful girls who might be mistaken by the ignorant for gypsy blood. But the morning's nightmare was fresh in Victor's mind, and his memory, as perfect and as merciless as a photograph, called up in his mind the way his mother had looked, so terrified and hurt, and on the heels of that he remembered Valeria. Beautiful and intelligent and vibrant, with a shadow of sadness in her dark eyes the day he had left her.

Another man might claim that he acted upon impulse. That his body turned of its own accord and he moved in a trance towards the nattering cloud. Von Doom moved under his own power, the sharp turn of his heel and the slap of his boots over the cobbles punctuation marks on the sentence of his will. When the gawkers did not move out of his way fast enough, his lashing tongue ensured that they moved: staggered back, blinking, or be shouldered aside by force.

It did not take long. The circle had a wide berth, controlled perhaps by the police who still lingered among them. In its center was a woman wearing bright, beautiful layered clothes. She lay on the floor in a halo of her thick black hair and her own blood, and before he even drew close enough to see her face, Victor knew it was her. Somehow it was Valeria. Somehow, thousands of miles from Latveria, alone, his beautiful Valeria had died in a city square, stabbed through the heart, and left to be gawked at by insensitive strangers.

He had thought, when he woke alone in the hospital room after his dimensional travel device failed, after he saw the ruin of who he had been carved in burning fissures over the face in which he had once taken pride, once he destroyed the laboratory in which he had taken childish pleasure, that his heart was broken. He had thought that the faith in himself that he had proven unworthy was all the faith he had, that the warmth he remembered from his mother Cynthia's warm arms and cold hands the only warmth that mattered... because, while he cared for Valeria, there was so little of the vast, terrible world that she could know or learn or understand.

And now she lay there, her eyes emptier than those of the vapid cow he'd nearly sullied himself with at Empire State, none of the cleverness and wildness and wisdom or even the love, even the haunted longing, that for so long he'd seen there and hesitated to name. His heart twisted with a disgust so pronounced he thought he might be bent by it there and retch on the street, not because of the corpse but because of his own stupidity. How complacent and thoughtless he had been, to wrap himself in his failure and his anonymity, as if that could be armor to keep those candleflames of his home, of his heart, back with the gypsy caravan, still alive.

And she was here. And she was dead. _How? HOW?_

That she was here, where he was, could be no coincidence. Someone had brought her here. Someone had found his caravan and someone in that caravan had talked, perhaps to the Soviets, perhaps the Americans, perhaps some other party heretofore silent that also sought to gain control of him by using her. Perhaps one faction had brought her and another killed her. Perhaps that was what these petty governments were, school-children bickering over a toy and, Victor thought, begging, all of them, to be disciplined.

The rage he had felt after his father's death, that frozen inferno that transformed everything to a world of stark crystal clarity, that chilled his flesh and burnt his soul, that fire that he had felt bank to cool ashes when he believed himself on a direct path to not only his goal, but to the greatness he deserved... that rage flared in a way it never before had. Victor's skin felt taut and thick, constrictive; his eyes burned as his mind analyzed every detail of what was before him.

He would find who had killed Valeria, and like the Baron and his men, like all those who dared to harm what von Doom loved, that person would come to know a pain and despair beyond what anyone else could teach them.

  
Von Doom's anger was like a vast, cold lantern. It radiated from his body and transformed it, tall enough but uninspiring in size, to something which made people afraid. Daken was intrigued to see it, for in this man, barely into his twenties and without powers beyond those he carved out with his own mind, the crowd sensed a danger that made them pause. In this man's glowering silence, in the depthless shadows of his eyes, they found fear.

And in the mummy wrap around his face, they found something alien. A policeman moved first, stepped up as if to block von Doom from the body. That would not end well, Daken knew, and tsked under his breath. While a public scene was somewhat prescriptive, Daken had not slit the gypsy girl's throat just to cool his heels and wait for the aftermath of some provincial drama.

From the edge of the railway station he had an excellent vantage point to observe both his mark and the people around him, and as his fingers fluttered a luxurious, butterfly-light melody over the strings of his guitar, he let his pheromones sweep the crowd. _Safe_ , he sent, waves of _safe_ , with just a little _hurt_ to be a prick of sympathy. To envelop them all in a sense of warmth and of sensitivity to loss. The music his fingers teased from the strings was simple and banal, but the music he wrought from emotions and instincts was anything but: tears dripped freely, though von Doom's wrappings stayed dry.

Yet it seemed he had noticed the potential aggression of the police because he didn't continue his approach to the body. He stalked back through the crowd instead, his fists clenched and the muscles beneath his coat taut, simmering with controlled fury. Not a man for whom safety meant much, then, Daken supposed, or else one with a will more advanced than many. But then the malleable crowd had not been surprised by the bloody corpse of a friend, and Daken supposed that for people who developed such connections the naturally-produced emotions of loss would combat his own artificial, pheromone-driven biological responses.

He watched von Doom for a moment as the man returned to the path from which he had diverged to investigate the crowd. After he had gotten a bit away from the bustle of the square and the chaos of the murder, Daken leapt down from the platform and followed. Like many old places, this city was a warren of places to ambush and to hide. The smell of the train was sharp and acrid in the air, coal smoke and hot iron, and the people were blurs of sweat and perfume, of horror and prurient excitement.

Von Doom smelled like plain soap, some sort of floral cream and machine oil. The only emotion that Daken could scent through his plain brown-green clothing and his white face wrap was the smell that you get on the battlefield or in an alley where an old grudge erupts into violence and barrels someone into the grave. Not simply anger, but the desire to kill.

When they were far enough to avoid prying eyes or spying ears, Daken called out. He spoke the primary language of the city and deliberately with an accent. "Excuse me! I saw you with- ah, in the square. Did you know her?"

The young man whirled. His eyes were dark, Daken saw, dark, flat and burning with a cold fury. Daken was startled by a jolt of recognition. He understood those eyes, to a degree. His own hatred was always colder than he expected it to be.

"You would do well, whoever you are, to attend to your own business," von Doom snapped. His voice was deep, concise, erudite and glacial. A hint of Eastern Europe, so soft that Daken would not have been able to distinguish exactly where it came from, lingered at the edges of his bitten-clean consonants.

Before the train, Daken had planned this entire scenario. He had planned to enhance his similarities to poor doomed Valeria. Young. Foreign. Non-white. Attractive. Wide-eyed. Harmless. But now, with the electricity of the other man's killing rage raising the hair on his nape and with his heavy understanding of the icy, all-smothering darkness in the other man's gaze, he made a different choice.

It was still deception, of course. Just deception that revealed a little more of who he truly was. Older than von Doom, and the farthest thing in the world from harmless.

He took a step forward. Von Doom went still and Daken knew he was ready to go for a weapon. He couldn't have that. He lifted his hands, even as he showed Victor his real eyes. It was something he usually did only before he made a kill, but there was an instinct in him that told him it was the right thing to do. That a sweet little boy wouldn't interest von Doom as much as a jaded demon.

"We talked on the train," he said. He spoke quickly, smoothly, as he wove the air thick with pheromones. Not a heavy cloud of any in particular, but a confusing kaleidoscope of fear and lust and hunger, a web to trap and disorient von Doom's hostility. He kept his voice matter of fact, not imbuing the facts with any sentiment and choosing his words so that every one of them was true, while misleading. "We were the only two non-whites there. She told me she was frightened for the safety of a man she was meeting here. Said he had been injured." Daken inclined his head pointedly at the bandages on von Doom's face.

The other man's eyes narrowed. He was not, Daken thought, unusually resistant to the pheromones. His emotions beneath that icy façade were a maelstrom. He was used to having to control the storm inside, and so he did not show more than a twitch in response to anything Daken did. He was confused, but he did not know where the confusion came from. This made him wary, but he did not walk away. He stared, and spoke sharply: "Is there a point to this story? A moral, perhaps? Or a quote for a paycheck?"

Daken smiled and he didn't try to hide it. "I bought us sandwiches," he continued, as if von Doom hadn't spoken, and was gratified by the surge of outrage he saw in those very dark eyes. "She told me she came here because of a vision in a teacup. But we both know differently, don't we? Someone wanted her here, to control you, and someone else didn't want that to happen."

Von Doom's clenched fists loosened, stretched, then clenched again. "I grow impatient with your anecdotes. What do you want?"

 _We want you,_ Daken thought, _but it isn't time for quite so much truth. You still have your nightmare._ He rested his guitar over his shoulders and fixed von Doom with a calm smile that he knew very well didn't touch his eyes. "I have business in this city. I don't need operatives and assassins from other countries wandering about causing messes and getting in my way. And she was a nice girl. I liked her."

It was true. Daken had been instantly lethal and struck from behind, not just to avoid stray blood droplets, but because, silly innocent stories of tea leaves aside, he had enjoyed their conversation more than he enjoyed the dry, overpriced sandwiches. He had enjoyed quietly making fun of the woman who hadn't wanted to serve them until he proved he had money.

"So what I want is for you to tell me what is going on, and in return I will avenge your friend."

 _Wait for it_. Daken kept his smile hidden this time.

Von Doom scoffed. He turned, his words as heavy as tombstones. "I will deal with her murderers. I have no need of you."

"You mean you will make a scene, draw more of your enemies, and make a nuisance for me," Daken sighed. "Fine. Second proposal. I can find the agents in this city more easily than you can-"

"I understand why you hold that delusion, but it is not valid. I have no need of you."

Von Doom was too calm. Too certain. A trickle of ice dripped down Daken's spine. He could not lose this. He could not return in failure. Visions of the pit, of the lash, of all the endless torments failure brought flickered through his mind and he fought down the urge to sweat, to vomit, or to do something desperate. He knew his façade had slipped in that instant, and lashed out with a rush of sex pheromones so intense he expected half the street would be pregnant come nightfall.

He stepped closer, and von Doom didn't move, and their eyes were locked together. Lust was a storm around them, and von Doom's arms were trembling, his fists clenched so tightly that Daken smelled a faint tang of blood where his nails must have cut his palms. Daken stepped closer still.

Now, he could see the slight difference in shade between von Doom's irises and his blown pupils. Now, even now, those eyes were cold and they burned. Daken felt attraction shiver through him, momentary but intense.

"Fine," he said softly, as he took another step. "You can take care of your enemies yourself. But you do need me."

Von Doom's hand rose, his glove stroked along Daken's throat and tilted his head up. His voice was deeper now, and softer. "But why," he said, almost as if he were asking himself, "why do I need you?"

Daken didn't answer. Anything he said would be too much. Too forceful, too coy, too seductive, too disingenuous.

All he did was hold eye contact with Victor von Doom, and that, in itself, was not easy. That first unwelcome throb of arousal surged through him again when Victor's gloved hand curled, fingers around the nape of his neck, thumb against his pulse.

He wondered if von Doom would try to choke him, like he had that girl at Empire State University.

Victor's thumb stroked Daken's carotid as he slowly backed Daken against the edge of the alley. It pressed in hard, not choking but hurting, as von Doom's lips pressed over his, his kiss wild and harsh, grieving and angry, scraping with teeth, pressing Daken's head against the stone so hard his hair pulled against it, taking everything he wanted.

Daken wanted to give as well as he got, to grab the back of von Doom's head and sink his teeth into his neck and open his trousers in this alley where anyone might wander by. To ruin him. Instead, he answered violence with comfort. He kissed softly, he opened his mouth submissively to Victor's harsh tongue, kissed and suckled sweetly at von Doom's lips.

The kiss moved the bandages up, revealing dark pink, slick and kiss-swollen lips that were unmarred by any incident. Von Doom licked over them, then shifted his grip so his hand was grasping Daken's throat from the front, and shoved him harder against the wall. Daken's shoulders and head shuddered with impact.

He stepped in close, so close that Daken could smell the sourness of improper eating habits, and could have killed him as easily as it was to draw in a breath. Von Doom pressed his lips to Daken's ear and growled, "Why?"

There was still no answer. There was hard stone and unforgiving fingers and a shattered plan and a shattered man, and Daken said, "Because I won't break."

"Unlikely."

"Fact," he hissed. His hands snapped up, fingers digging into the muscles of von Doom's biceps, digging as if they wanted to tunnel holes. He spun them, knocked von Doom against the wall and brought his knee up hard to keep him there, smiling into furious dark eyes. "But fine, then. Because I want you. And because I won't die."


End file.
